July 11, 1959

A sunny afternoon in early summer. A crow flies over and looks down like God on an old wooden farmhouse, the green lawn in front, outbuildings surrounding the dusty barnyard in back.
On the front porch of the house, three people gather and sit on the edge of the porch, feet on the grass. A father, a mother, a daughter. The father speaks, gesturing toward some part of the landscape that he's just finished mowing. The mother pushes her hair back from her face with an arm smudged with her flower garden's dirt, and smiles an answer. The adolescent daughter wraps her legs into lissome loops, turns a curry comb in her hands, asks a question, laughs.
They are a unit, symmetrical and complete.
Fire, water, earth, green-scented air.


Inside the house, another child, a younger girl, a little girl, lies on a couch staring at a television screen. She hears the people speaking, laughing. She listens for the sound of her name, some tone of "Where is...?" but hears none. She rises and walks to the screen door and stands watching the family for a moment. They smile into each others' eyes, laugh, converse. No one notices the little girl. No one looks toward the screen where she stands. 
They are complete as they are, the three of them.
They lack nothing, no one.
The little girl turns away. Tears fill her eyes, but they do not fall.